Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: QuantumClue on 18/01/2011 21:16:54
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According to a scientist, it seems that we may have in fact discovered the particle over 10 years ago:
http://www.sciencefriday.com/blog/2011/01/higgs-boson-already-found/
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The problem is that all physics at this level is statistics. The machines produce billions of "experiments" in the form of collisions. The outputs of these collisions are very complex but most of them can be explained as events involving known and understood particles and are not very interesting except that they refine our knowledge of the probability of these events. Quite a lot of events cannot be fully explained. this may be because the detectors missed a detail or possibly something unusual is going on. Some of these may fit detections of particles that are being looked for (like the higgs) and are very interesting but until experiments can be done regularly and the probability of the event happening defined reasonably accurately no discovery can be declared. Once this has been done to the satisfaction of several groups older results can be re-scanned and a new set of known results added to the pile but there will still be very many unexplained results on file for the next time.
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It is true, quantum theory is based on errors. I believe someone argued with foolosophy at this time concerning this, an perhaps I should have spoke up. Because we can never be certain about anything, we can alternatively state we are in an error percentage from the most correct answer we can stipulate from physics. This is because physics is a totally statistical theory at best. It's all statistics.
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It is true, quantum theory is based on errors. I believe someone argued with foolosophy at this time concerning this, an perhaps I should have spoke up. Because we can never be certain about anything, we can alternatively state we are in an error percentage from the most correct answer we can stipulate from physics. This is because physics is a totally statistical theory at best. It's all statistics.
There's a level at which statistics make something overwhelmingly likely. I heard that interview and it sounded like the author knew that there was some pretty good evidence for the Higgs. The problem is that these experiments are so expensive and take so long that no one wants to get it wrong. He said they require 99.99994...% certainty that they've seen the Higgs (5 standard deviations for anyone who knows statistics) to announce a discovery.
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Read This one (http://plus.maths.org/content/particle-hunting-lhc#comment-2183) for a nice explanation of how the Higgs particle is thought to be found. As always when it comes to QM it will be a search for a 'particle', of sorts :) Even if the author rather prefers to refer to it is as a 'jelly', which I myself find much more appropriate. He*, to me everything seems like Jelly, SpaceTime included :)
And if we don't find it we will at least get new ideas.
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The LHC does not seem to have found it yet, but it has found something else.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=particles-that-flock
(No sheep jokes, if you please.)
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Ahhh.
Entangled gluons my dear Watson.
And flocking too?